by Len Levinson
“Mein Fuehrer!” he said excitedly, waving a piece of paper in the air.
His arms folded, Hitler turned toward him. “What is it?”
Schmundt thrust the piece of paper toward Hitler. “Good news from the west!”
Hitler snatched the piece of paper out of his hand and read it greedily. It was a report from Field Marshal Rommel that said the American drive in Normandy had been stopped cold by the Lehr Division.
“This is the beginning!” Hitler said, his eyes glittering as in the old days. “This is the turn of the tide! I can feel it! Can’t you?”
Schmundt couldn’t feel anything, but he said: “Yes, my Fuehrer.”
“This is marvelous news!” Hitler gushed. “The Americans and British are on their last legs in Normandy—I can see that quite clearly now. Soon we’ll push them off the continent, and then we’ll be able to concentrate all our forces and new weapons on the Russians in the east!” He grasped Schmundt by the shoulders. “Victory is within our grasp!”
“Yes, my Fuehrer!”
Hitler looked over Schmundt’s shoulder, and his eyes fell on a colonel carrying a bulging yellow briefcase. The colonel wore a black patch over one eye; was missing one arm; had lost two fingers from his remaining hand; and limped badly. Hitler felt a chill run up his spine at the sight of this badly maimed officer.
“Who’s that?” Hitler asked.
“Who do you mean?” Schmundt asked, turning around.
“That one over there—the one with the black patch over his eye.”
Schmundt looked across the room. “That’s Colonel Count Schenk von Stauffenberg. He’s on General Fromm’s staff. Would you like to meet him?”
“No-no-no. That won’t be necessary. I just wondered who he was. I’ve noticed him here before.”
“I’ve heard that he was wounded in North Africa, sir, and that he was a very brave officer. They say he’s a member of one of the finest old families in South Germany.”
“Hmmm,” said Hitler, watching von Stauffenberg limp toward the door. “Very interesting.”
Chapter Nineteen
Mahoney felt his arms and legs being pulled. He opened his eyes and tried to wriggle free.
“He’s alive!” shouted one of the GIs on the Graves Registration team. He dropped Mahoney’s legs and jumped back.
The soldier holding Mahoney’s arms let him down gently and bent over him. “Are you all right?”
Mahoney blinked. The sun was shining and smoke trailed into the sky. “Where am I?”
“In France.”
Mahoney looked around and saw the tank he’d knocked out. Heaps of bodies were everywhere and Graves Registration units were loading them into trucks.
“We thought you were dead,” said one of the soldiers.
Mahoney took a deep breath, because he also thought he’d been dead. His chest hurt terribly and he had a headache. “Help me up.”
They took his hands and pulled him to his feet. Mahoney took huge draughts of air and looked around. He felt as though he’d just come back from the grave. Looking down at his shirt, he saw a big
hole torn into it. He unbuttoned the shirt and reached inside, his fingers coming to rest on Lieu
tenant Andrews’ Bible. The bullet evidently had hit the Bible and knocked the wind out of him. He took out the Bible and saw that the front of it had been smashed in. Opening it up, he saw the black
slug burrowed inside. It had passed all the way through the Old Testament and halfway through the
New. On the first clean page his eyes fell on the words:
The Lord said, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat:
Mahoney closed the Bible. He remembered his Roman Catholic background and decided that God had saved his life. He crossed himself and said: “In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.”
The soldiers from the Graves Registration Unit crowded around, looking at the bullet in the book.
“Hey Charlie,” one of them said, “I wonder if we ever buried a guy who was still alive?”
“Shit, I hope not,” Charlie said.
“What day is this?” Mahoney asked.
“July sixth.”
Mahoney realized that he’d been shot yesterday and had been lying unconscious on the battlefield for nearly twenty-four hours. He raised his arm to check his watches, and saw that both of them were gone. The Germans had stripped him clean, or maybe it was the Americans. Either way, he didn’t have his watches anymore.
“When I was hit,” Mahoney said, “the Germans had overrun this position. What the hell happened?”
“Oh, we pushed them back, Sarge,” one of the GIs said. “A couple of our armored divisions showed up and did the job.”
“Where’s the front line right now?”
One of the GIs pointed. “Thataway.”
“Any of you guys got anything in your canteens?”
One of the GIs handed him a canteen full of water. Mahoney took a few swallows, wiped the back of his mouth with his hand, returned the canteen, thanked the GI, and walked back to the front lines.
The GIs stared at him as though he were Lazarus. Mahoney took out a cigarette and lit it with his Zippo, giving thanks that the Germans had not stolen it. Puffing the cigarette and smiling, he trudged toward the front lines.
He recalled a line from a Bible study class he’d been forced to attend when he’d been a boy at parochial school. . . . my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and has been found.
On July 6, General George S. Patton arrived in Normandy. Descending the ladder from the plane, he wore shiny riding boots, carried a riding crop, and had a pearl-handled revolver strapped to his waist. He still was in disgrace for slapping a GI in Italy and making inopportune remarks to the press in England. Now he was in Normandy and his Third Army would follow him over during the next few weeks, becoming fully operational toward the end of July.
Some of the divisions already fighting in France would become part of the new Third Army, and General Patton was eager to see what they looked like. He had a brief meeting with General Bradley and his staff, then got in a jeep and went on a tour of Normandy.
As his driver took him closer to the front line, General Patton studied the devastation of war. He’d fought in this very country as a young lieutenant during the First World War, when he’d been on Blackjack Pershing’s staff, and he’d travelled here between the wars with his wife. He knew the terrain better than any other American officer, and knew that a war should not be fought here. The hedgerow country must be bypassed somehow so that tanks could break loose and slice the enemy to ribbons.
He saw fresh troops moving up to the front, and exhausted troops moving back. Burnt-out hulks of American and German tanks lined the roads; old picturesque towns had become fields of rubble. American troops ate cans of food beside the road and cheered as their famous General Patton drove past. Patton waved his riding crop at them. He loved American soldiers and thought they were the best on earth, because they were more resourceful and flexible than other soldiers.
In the afternoon a big hospital tent could be seen in the distance. Patton didn’t like hospital tents anymore, because the soldier he’d slapped in Italy had been a patient in one. Patton had lost his temper because if a man was fit for duty he should be at the front lines. Men who malingered endangered the lives of their comrades, and Patton couldn’t stand that. He believed that such men should be shot on the spot, but the American Army didn’t believe in punishment like that.
He told the driver to bring him to the hospital, and the driver turned off the road. He pulled up to the hospital tent and before the jeep had stopped fully, Patton jumped out, the sun gleaming on his golden general stars and his pearl-handled revolver. He was recognized instantly, soldiers snapping to attention and saluting; then the doctor was sent for, and Patton went on a tour of the hospital.
He saw bandaged men lying in beds, and shook their hands. He pra
ised them for their good work and told them victory was just around the corner. Passing from bed to bed, he radiated strength and confidence, and the morale of the men began to rise. He slapped them on their shoulders and spoke to them in their own tough language. He saw a few who seemed to be malingering, and he steered clear of them.
At the far end of the tent, he looked through the flap and saw a crowd of men gathered.
“What’s going on out there?” he asked the doctor, pointing with his riding crop.
“A religious service, sir.”
“Really? What kind?”
“Catholic, I believe.”
Patton was a Roman Catholic and decided to attend the Mass. Strolling toward the group of men, he thought how strange it was that a group of soldiers dedicated to war would be praying to the Prince of Peace. The soldiers were concentrated on the priest and didn’t turn around at Patton’s approach. He silently took his place at the rear of the men and stood with his hands held behind his back.
The priest was in the middle of the penitential rite, where he was granting mass absolution to the soldiers in front of him, because he didn’t have time for individual confessions. The rite would place the soldiers in a state of grace so that if they were killed in battle they would die clean.
Patton got down on his knees in the mud and prayed with the soldiers. He asked for God to give him the strength to lead his men to victory. He didn’t think he was being hypocritical, because he believed that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party were the incarnation of evil, and that the war was a kind of Crusade.
The priest read selections from the Old Testament and New Testament, omitted a homily because he didn’t have much time left (he had to say Mass at several more places that day), and then proceeded with the Eucharistic ceremony, raising the round wafer high in the air and chanting in Latin. When finished with the prayers, the men arose and formed a line to receive the wafer.
Patton stood at the end of the line, watching the men leave the priest with the wafer in their mouths. Although filthy and bedraggled, they had sweet devout looks on their faces, and again Patton was proud to be the leader of men such as these.
His eyes came to rest on a tall broad-shouldered master sergeant whose shirt was torn in front. The sergeant hadn’t shaved for many days, his black hair was tousled, and he carried his helmet under his arm. After receiving the sacrament, the sergeant dropped to his knees on the ground and clasped his hands together in front of his nose, while closing his eyes.
Patton was fascinated by this soldier and couldn’t stop looking at him. The sergeant had the face of a killer, a man who would stomp on the heads of babies, and yet here he was praying with all his heart and soul, his body bent in supplication, and Patton could feel the soldier’s reverence and spiritual anguish.
Now there’s a man who really believes, Patton thought as he moved forward in the line.
Chapter Twenty
Field Marshals von Kluge and Rommel stood beneath a camouflage net on the hilltop near Saint Lo and looked through binoculars at the battlefield in the distance.
Smoke was everywhere and the tanks were like gray little bugs. The tanks moved back and forth, emitting red flashes. Occasionally one of them would be engulfed by smoke and never move again. The armies of foot soldiers looked like bits of dust being swept along by the wind. The battle had been raging for days now, and the toll had been terrible.
Von Kluge lowered his binoculars and sighed.
“Did you say something?” Rommel asked absent-mindedly, still studying the battlefield and trying to think of a way to win a great victory.
“No,” von Kluge said, “but I wonder how long we can hold them back. They keep bringing more and more men and tanks to the front, while we have to make do with what we have.”
“If only there was a way ...” Rommel mused.
“If we don’t receive reinforcements, there cannot be a way.”
Rommel lowered his binoculars and smiled at von Kluge. “Now you’re starting to sound like me.”
Von Kluge shrugged. “The situation here is worse than I thought. When I’m with the Fuehrer I believe that anything is possible, but when I come to the front I realize we are all mortals subject to the basic rules of existence. If an army is outnumbered, it cannot hold out for long, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Well,” Rommel said, trying to be jaunty, “perhaps we can hold out long enough.”
“But what is long enough, Herr Field Marshal—a month, a year, two years? It is true that the terrain favors us, and that we are not totally lacking in resources. But the Americans have more resources—vastly more. We cannot hold them back here forever.”
“The Fuehrer says his new weapons will be ready soon.”
Von Kluge shook his head sadly. “The Fuehrer will say something to make a point, and the tragedy of it all is that people like me listen and believe.”
“That is his great strength,” Rommel said.
“And perhaps the ruin of Germany,” von Kluge replied.
It was evening at the command post of General Bradley. He stood at his map table with General Eisenhower, studying troop dispositions.
“Saint Lo should have been taken six days ago,” General Bradley said gravely, “and still we don’t have it. We’re advancing slowly, but we’re paying too high a price. There must be another way to go about this.”
“You’ve got to keep plugging, Brad,” Ike said. “We can’t pull out of the hedgerows now that we’re so committed there. You’ve got to take Saint Lo, and I’ll give you anything you need to help accomplish that end.”
Bradley looked at him and smiled. “Anything?”
“Anything I have—I’ll give you. What do you want?”
“Well, there’s one tactic that we haven’t tried yet, and maybe we should.” Bradley pointed to the map. “We’re not making any headway because of those damned hedgerows. If we could move, we’d roll right over the Germans because we have more of everything. If you’re serious about taking Saint Lo, then you’ll have to give me what I need to destroy those hedgerows.”
“What’s that, Brad?”
“You’ll think I’m crazy when I tell you, because it’s a wild idea.”
“It won’t be the first wild idea you ever had. What is it?”
With his finger and thumb, Bradley described a broad swath from the American front lines to Saint Lo. “I’d like you to get the air force to bomb a path one mile wide from our lines to Saint Lo. I want the bombing to be so intense and heavy that it will destroy everything in its path, including the hedgerows. Then all we have to do is start up our tanks and roll south to Saint Lo.”
Ike stared at the map. “A carpet of bombs,” he whispered. “What an idea.”
“Have you got a better one?”
“No, but I’m not sure I can get the air force behind it. It’ll require thousands of planes and countless tons of bombs, just to take a little town that hardly exists anymore.”
“It’s not the town we need,” Bradley reminded him, “but the roads and terrain behind the town.”
“I know—I know.” Ike looked at the map. “What incredible destruction. I’d sure hate to be underneath it.”
“The Germans won’t be underneath it for long, I assure you. They’ll pull back pretty fast.”
Ike shook his head slowly. “It’ll be hard to convince the air force.”
Bradley smiled. “You can do it, General. You’re the most persuasive man in the world.”
Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion had been pulled off the line and was bivouacked in a little forest beside a winding stream. Most of the company had been wiped out in the attack by the Lehr Division, but Lieutenant Ferrara has somehow survived.
Pfc Carrington, the company clerk, had not survived. An artillery shell had landed on him and all his morning reports, and the company’s administration was in shambles. New replacements had filled the company to its normal table of organization, but nobody knew each other.
The new acting First Sergeant was Sergeant First Class Plutarski, who had been a construction worker in civilian life and was in no way prepared to handle the administrative work that first sergeants were supposed to handle.
The new company clerk was Private Alan Braithwaite from Phoenix, Arizona, who was a recent graduate of the clerk-typist school in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. He realized that he had a lot of power in the company, since Plutarski shirked his duties as much as he could. A bank teller in civilian life, Braithwaite was doing his best to bring the confusion under control.
Corporal Cranepool also had survived the Lehr attack. In the smoke and madness of the battle, he’d managed to make it back to friendly lines. He was sure that Mahoney had been killed, and in fact Mahoney had been listed on the morning report as missing in action. Cranepool felt bad, but he was philosophical about it. He knew that people were killed in war—he’d seen many people die right beside him, and now Mahoney had joined that big infantry regiment in the sky. Those were the breaks of the game.
Late one afternoon, the company was lined up in front of the mess tent, the soldiers carrying their mess kits and eagerly awaiting dinner. The new replacements spoke to each other about their apprehension of going into combat; the veterans discussed the horrors they’d seen since arriving in France; and some only could talk about home, about the way Mom cooked and that sweet young chickie who lived down the street.
As they waited in line, mist rose from the forest floor. Then, out of the mist came a figure, like an apparition. The figure stopped when he saw the long line, and looked at it from the distance, not moving a muscle. He wore new green fatigues and there were master sergeant’s stripes on his shoulders, but in the forest shadows his face couldn’t be seen.
The soldiers looked at the master sergeant, wondering who he was. They didn’t have any master sergeants in Charlie Company at the time—all the ones they’d had were killed in the attack of the Lehr Division.
